Earlier this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences continued their overhaul of the Oscars with what might appear to be a fairly minor change in how votes are tallied for the Best Picture category. This minor change, however, could potentially alter the kinds of movies that take home the biggest award of the night, especially now with the expanded number of nominees.

Starting next year, Academy members will be required to rank all ten nominated films in order of preference, rather than simply casting a vote for the single movie that they want to see win. In this way, if there is no consensus on the first place votes, a movie that was consistently ranked second or third by more people could actually end up winning the award.

So what kind of results can we expect? Who knows! It stands to reason that it will be harder for very divisive films to eek out a win, and easier for more broad crowd pleasers. Is this an example of the Rotten Tomatoes mentality starting to bleed over into the Academy Awards? Maybe. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how predictable next year’s winner turns out to be.